CLEVELAND, Ohio- Standing on the steps of City Hall and flanked by his wife Elizabeth and three of his five daughters, Cleveland City Council President Kevin Kelley, a White west side councilman and ally of four-term Black mayor Frank Jackson, officially announced on Thursday that he will make a run for mayor this year of the largely Black major American city of some 385,000 people.
Jackson, 74, has not ruled out seeking an unprecedented fifth term but Kelley's entrance into the race and the mayor's lack of fundraising suggest that he will not seek reelection to the powerful post, sources say.
“I talked with residents in every ward across Cleveland,” Kelley said in a press release. “They shared their concerns about safety, their desire for strong neighborhoods to call home and the need to have good-paying jobs. They care about Cleveland’s future. They believe, like I do, that Cleveland’s best days are ahead.”
A Democrat and city council president since 2006 when Jackson took office as mayor, Kelley, a practicing lawyer, represents Ward 13, which includes Old Brooklyn and part of the Stockyard neighborhood.
He said his campaign focus areas are community policing, safe and prosperous neighborhoods, supporting police officers, addressing domestic violence and sex crimes, poverty, and rebuilding the city's infrastructure.
He is the likely a front runner of the announced candidates for mayor, though nothing is guaranteed, particularly since he is White and Cleveland is roughly 60 percent Black.
And while he enjoys a campaign war chest of more that a half million dollars and backing by corporate entities, he struggles among progressives angry that he has in the past gone against the fight for a $15 minimum wage.
They say he is an establishment politician who will carry on the agendas of Jackson if elected mayor of the impoverished city of Cleveland.
Others say he is safe, and stable during a time of strife and unrest across the country from the still raging pandemic to out-of- control White cops who freely gun down unarmed Blacks with impunity, including in Cleveland.
His decision to enter the race for mayor comes after a listening tour this spring.
"This spring, I held a listening tour in every one of Cleveland’s 17 wards, and I heard from you loud and clear," Kelley said after the tour.
He said that "Cleveland is in a crisis unlike any time in its 225-year history. People are hurting. People are sick and dying from this pandemic. And this pandemic has exacerbated the existing problems of disparity, poverty, crime, and unemployment.
Though the even-tempered Kelley is likable in the political arena, some Black members of city council say he is not supportive enough of them and that the White council persons get more city resources for their wards from both he and Jackson in comparison to Black east side council persons.
He has also upset Black Cleveland activists after promising to get rid of a police chase policy that Jackson put in place that essentially limits police car chases to instances in which the suspect is suspected of with an OVI or violence felony, a policy the current mayor put in place in 2014 behind a host of unnecessary police car chases that resulted in fatal injuries of innocent people, mainly Black people.
Kelley's announcement follows an announcement last month by Zack Reed that he will make a second bid for mayor, Reed a former east side councilman who lost a non-partisan mayoral runoff to Jackson in 2017, getting 40 percent of the vote.
He is the fifth person to enter the race for mayor, including Reed, and newcomer Justin Bibb, 34 and a former banker who is also Black and a protege of former mayor Michael R. White,
Bibb has raised more than a quarter of a million dollars for his mayoral bid.
Elections for mayor and city council are held simultaneously in the same year, which keeps most of the city legislators on the 17- member city council from giving up a relatively save council seat for a possible, and often unlikely, mayoral win.
Others purportedly running for mayor include state Sen. Sandra Williams, former congressman Dennis Kucinich, Robert Kilo, and Edwin's entrepreneur Brandon Chrostowski.
The declared candidates thus far are Kelley, Reed, Bibb, Ross DiBello, and Ross Kostendt.
The top two primary winners will advance to the Nov. 2 general election.
Currently, all 17 city council seats, practically half held by Whites and the other half by Blacks, are Democrats.
The city's last three mayors, White, who is Black , former mayor Jane Campbell, the city's first and only female mayor, and current Mayor Jackson, the city's third Black mayor behind White and former mayor the late Carl B. Stokes, have also been Democrats.
The brother of the late congressman Louis Stokes, Ohio's first Black congressperson, Carl Stokes became the first Black mayor of Cleveland and of a major American city when he was elected in 1967 when the city was majority White.
Pictured is Daunte Wright
